For Karl Marx, the value of a commodity consists of two contradictory aspects: use value and exchange value. Use value refers to a product’s utility in satisfying needs and wants as afforded by its material properties.

Sraffa was really concerned about finding an invariable standard for prices and wages, in order to obtain a uniform rate of profits consistent with the concept of value. In other words, the rise of income share by one class should be exactly offset by the reduction of income share by the other class.

From a personal point of view there is little doubt that Sraffa identified with Marxism, and close friends like Antonio Gramsci and Maurice Dobb would agree. Several authors tend to believe that the latter theory is central for Marx’s theory of exploitation.

The Neo-Ricardian economic theory assumes that production cannot be completed instantaneously or that the rate of profit is positive. They showed the possibility that the comparative advantage in terms of production prices may differ from it in terms of labor values.

Production for exchange in the market is commodity production. At the beginning of commodity exchange, people bartered one product for another. Later in the long process of the development of commodity exchange, a particular commodity—money—was separated from other commodities spontaneously.

Like the other classical economists, Karl Marx believed in the labor theory of value to explain relative differences in market prices. This theory stated that the value of a produced economic good can be measured objectively by the average number of labor hours required to produce it.

Ricardian socialism is a branch of classical economic thought based upon the work of the economist David Ricardo (1772–1823). Although Ricardian socialist thought had some influence on Karl Marx’s theories, there is disagreement about the extent to which this is the case.

(a) “Basic necessities” – refers to rice, corn, bread, fresh, dried and canned fish and other marine products, fresh pork, beef and poultry meat, fresh eggs, fresh and processed milk, infant formulas, fresh vegetables, root crops, coffee, sugar, cooking oil, salt, laundry soap, detergents, firewood, charcoal, candles …

In 2020, the 10 largest sources of cash receipts from the sale of U.S.-produced farm commodities were (in descending order): cattle/calves, corn, dairy products/milk, soybeans, miscellaneous crops, broilers, hogs, wheat, chicken eggs, and hay.

1.3 The historic significance of money Under the condition of non-commodity economy, the general human labor does not manifest itself as value, and there is no contradiction between use value and value, concrete labor and abstract labor, social labor and individual labor, so there is no money.

What Is Marxism? Marxism is a social, political, and economic philosophy named after Karl Marx. It examines the effect of capitalism on labor, productivity, and economic development and argues for a worker revolution to overturn capitalism in favor of communism.

Actually, there is almost a complete gap of twenty years of work in Sraffa’s archive, for the period 1931-41 and again for the period 1945-55, which is highly puzzling. In any case, the first period was intensely devoted to the broader philosophical and methodological questions.

Sraffa arrived in July of 1927 and remained there for life. In the shelter of the English city, he held courses about advanced value theory in his first three years.

A critique of Sraffa has value in its own right but there is a serious ideological element at stake here.

By rearranging (i.e., rescaling) the input-output data of the real system, Sraffa derives another system of inputs and outputs, which, in some sense, represents the average of the given system and is mathematically equivalent to that system.